


El lado bueno de las cosas

by Anonymous



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Fedal - Freeform, Hiatus escape, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:58:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is more a sketch than a story.  Roger and Rafa escape to Rafa's house in the Dominican Republic during the off season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	El lado bueno de las cosas

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed, so any mistakes, confusions, etc., are mine.

“Why have we never come here before?” he asks, sometime in the night. 

Rafa curls tighter against him. “We didn’t need to come here, no?” he says, half asleep. Outside waves sweep a rhythm against the beach, from the narrow point of land to the west towards the jetty at the eastern end of the small, private bay. Out there in the dark bobs Rafa’s boat, the one he keeps here, the one no one knows.

Roger presses his mouth against Rafa’s temple. “But I like it,” he says. Even now, in the middle of the night, there’s a sheen of sweat on Rafa’s skin. He refuses to turn on the air conditioning, saying that the open windows are enough. “We should come here again.”

“Any time you like,” murmurs Rafa. Roger can feel the words against his skin. Rafa’s breath comes slightly faster than the waves, and Roger listens to both for some time before he falls asleep.

 

The morning is pale pink at first, fading to yellow and then suddenly it is day. “Get up,” says Rafa, never one for lounging in bed, and even here amongst the palm trees Roger wants to stay in bed a few more minutes.

“Come back,” he says, when Rafa emerges from the bathroom smelling faintly of toothpaste and soap.

Rafa smiles and it’s better than the dawn, brighter than the sun. “Only for the sex,” he says. “Not just to lie around.”

Roger laughs. “That’s fine with me,” he says. He lifts up the sheet and Rafa climbs back in. They slide together, Rafa half on top of Roger, his thigh pushing Roger’s legs apart. Everything so familiar now, and yet nothing ever dull about the moments when they touch. At times like this it feels to Roger as if they are taking a break from the world itself. Out there, they are rivals, friends. In the quiet places, they are… this. They still have found no name for it, and Roger thinks perhaps it needs none.

Rafa is eager, urgent. Under the sheet, he sucks Roger’s cock, then he climbs back up and pushes the sheet away, jerking himself hard and reaching for the lube. Roger lies and waits and then moans a little as Rafa works him open. Here, outside of the world, this is what he wants: Rafa pushing inside him, the stretch in his legs, the weight of Rafa’s body holding him down. “Are you ready?” says Rafa, breathlessly, and Roger nods without a word. 

 

Later the sun beats down and he lies beside the pool. “What are you reading?” says Rafa, emerging from the pool bronzed and dripping and Roger can’t answer for a moment, not until Rafa’s eyebrow quirks up and he laughs a little.

“ _The Silver Linings Playbook_ ,” says Roger.

“It’s good?” says Rafa. He’s standing still with his arms a little out from his body, his face turned up towards the sun with his eyes closed.

“What are you doing?” says Roger.

Rafa opens one eye and squints down at him before turning his face back towards the sun. “Drying,” he says.

“You look like Superman soaking up energy from the sun,” says Roger.

Rafa grins. “Maybe this is true. Maybe I am Superman.”

“Yeah,” says Roger. He pretends to sound half convinced. “Maybe that would explain a few things.”

Rafa laughs. “But is it good? Your book?” he says.

Roger flicks the pages with his thumb. “It is, actually,” he said. “I thought Mirka gave it to me as some kind of self-help thing. Like, you know, I should find the silver linings or something. But it’s good.”

“I think this is a movie.” Rafa gestures to show him the cover. Roger holds it up. There’s a picture of Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence on the front. “Ah, sí. _El lado bueno de las cosas_. I see this movie. Is good.”

“Don’t tell me the end,” says Roger.

“Okay.”

“Is it a good ending?”

“You say not to tell you,” says Rafa, grinning and smoothing back his hair. 

“Yeah, but just in general.”

“Read and see,” says Rafa. He picks up a towel from the sun lounger beside Roger and finishes drying himself off. “Maybe we watch the movie when you’re finished.” He spreads the towel over the lounger and lies down. “You put sun cream on my back?” He crosses his arms and rests his head in the crook of his elbows.

Roger picks up the photo he uses as a bookmark. It’s a picture of him and Mirka holding Myla and Charlene soon after they were born. He slips it into his place in the book and puts it down on the ground beside his lounger. “I think I can do that,” he says.

Rafa smiles. They get sun cream everywhere in the end.

 

And that’s how it goes. A glorious week in December in the Dominican Republic, in Rafa’s secret hideaway. Roger skypes with Mirka and the girls from the laptop in the kitchen while Rafa cooks pasta behind him and waves at Myla and Charlene behind their father’s head. “You know I can see you in the little screen, right?” says Roger, but that just makes Rafa start making faces till everyone’s laughing and the pasta is a little overcooked.

“Go,” says Mirka. She’s wearing winter knits against the Swiss cold. “Your lunch is ready, or dinner, or whatever you’re having at this time.”

“Yeah,” says Roger. Rafa is spooning the pasta onto plates and the place smells of fresh fried prawns. “You know, he can actually cook.” Rafa flashes a grin over his shoulder.

“I believe you,” says Mirka, sceptically. “Come on,” she says. “Time for bed.” The girls press kisses to the camera. Roger kisses them back. 

“See you on Sunday,” he tells them, before disconnecting.

“Come on,” says Rafa. He’s poured two glasses of white wine and holds one out to Roger. He always recognises the faint sadness Roger is left with after he says goodbye to his daughters and his wife. He always leaves Roger space to feel it. He pretends to be fiddling with the parmesan grater while Roger takes his wineglass to the table set up on the balcony and looks out across the afternoon sea. 

Only a couple of houses along this stretch of the bay are occupied. The rest await Christmas or the New Year, when wealthy occupants from New York or London or Tokyo come to their Caribbean getaways. It’s deathly private here. Apart from the staff who came in to clean the place and bring groceries twice in the week, they might be the last people on earth. If they were, he could think of worse places to be stranded. The sand is a perfect white and the ocean a warm blue, and later, as the sun sets, they sky will turn a hazy pink and then the sea will be aflame. This will be their last sunset together for some time.

“Here,” says Rafa. He lays the plates down on the table. He presses a switch on the wall and extends an overhead brise soleil so the table is in shade.

Rafa can cook only one thing, but he cooks it very well. Prawns with garlic and oil with linguini and parmesan. Parmesan is the only cheese Rafa will eat. “Perfect,” says Roger. “Even for the fourth time this week.”

“Well,” says Rafa. “I don’t see you cooking.”

Roger looks at him fondly. “You got me there,” he says.

It’s always been like this, so warm between them, so easy to talk. Sometimes he wonders if they should say other things. Like, how long can we do this? And, is this forever? Out in the bay, there’s a speedboat pulling a waterskier carving lazy figures of eight into the sea.

“Did you finish your book?” says Rafa.

“Yeah,” says Roger. “It was a good ending.”

“Is the same as the movie? They win the bet at the dance competition?” Rafa holds his wineglass by the stem and sips every moouthful as if it’s the first he’s ever tasted.

“Win the bet?” says Roger. “What bet? In the book they end up just talking and looking up at the clouds.”

Rafa looks at him, half squinting, half speculative. “Sounds like a better ending,” he says.

Roger shrugs, “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe. They always change it for movies.”

“In real life there are not always these easy things,” says Rafa. He concentrates on twirling linguini onto his fork.

“No,” says Roger, after a moment.

They catch each other’s glances, then, but they say nothing more.

 

There’s never an ending. Just another last night spent panting and sweating together, fucking and kissing and half sleeping, then rousing again for more. On nights like these, when the moon hangs fat over the sea and illuminates the soft, glistening angles of Rafa’s face, he can see things in the half-light that Rafa usually hides. Calloused fingers trace him and hold him and lock him down, Rafa’s mouth finds every electric point of pleasure on his body. He wrings everything from him, until finally, as the sun comes up, there’s nothing left and nothing left between them. They are raw and ragged at the edge of the day, twisted in sweaty sheets, and Rafa says, “Someday it could be like this. All the time. You and me.” Sweat slicks his hair against his skin. He is breathless against the crook of Roger’s neck.

And, hardly thinking, Roger whispers back, “I know.” It’s not exactly a promise, but it’s close enough.

 

But the murmurs of the morning evaporate under the sun, and when they board the jet later that day the edge has worn to the soft seams of familiarity. Rafa throws himself into a seat and pushes the back down, saying, “Oh my god, I need to sleep.” He wakes up somewhere over the Atlantic and they eat sushi and drink chilled beers. “You gonna train in Dubai?” he says. They hadn’t talked about training and plans at all in the house but here, back in the world, it’s on their minds again.

“Yeah,” says Roger. “See you in Doha?”

“For sure,” says Rafa, smiling. “Hey, usual hotel in Melbourne, yes?” He has a way of pronouncing “Melbourne”, Spanish vowels in an Australian word, that Roger could listen to all day.

“Of course,” he says. “We’ll get together there.”

“Good,” says Rafa, and he smiles. He pretends that the half-life they live is enough for him, he pretends that the truth is not whispered in the pale morning but spoken out loud in the light of day. But what else is there, for now, but fevered promises and stolen time? Far down below, beneath the cirrus haze, bleak islands rise from the hammered sea and the swell of the ocean breaks against their rocky outcrops. The current roils around them and from here they look like comets, tails of turbulence trailing out behind. Roger imagines the waves eternally beating on barren shores.

“How long before they’re gone?” he says, musingly.

Rafa looks down. “A very long time,” he says.

“You think?”

“They can endure,” says Rafa. He says it with the calm of one who knows.

It’s enough of an ending, for now.


End file.
